Why are different kinds of learning so differently compressible?
If I can work through a textbook in 20 1-hour sittings, I usually get similar results from 10 2-hour or 5 4-hour sessions. But piano isn’t that way at all: a 20x1hr piece simply can’t be learned in 5 sessions IME.
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One explanation might be that when learning piano pieces, successive sessions rely heavily on previous sessions having been consolidated, whereas many “book-learning” topics are somewhat more breadth-shaped.
Another might be that some tasks drain attention faster.
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Other examples of learning which don’t seem to compress very well:
– learning how to draw
– learning how to design user interfaces
– learning how to write
Ones which seem to compress well:
– learning how to cook
– learning a new programming language
– learning a spoken language
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“Fundamentals of Piano Practice” makes the case that "mental play" is crucial for learning pieces. That does resonate; I catch myself silently/motionlessly “playing” difficult passages in bed. tals-of-piano-practice.readthedocs.io/chapter1/ch1_t
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How much of this is cognitive vs embodied understanding?
I know that drumming for me had both elements - cognitive being much easier to compress. Embodied required the muscles to learn it, which took spaced repetition, not just pure repetition.
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Muscle memory is very different than intellectual understanding. No idea _why_, but it holds up across fields as a solid result. e.g., sports vs math, tying your shoes vs punctuation, etc…
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And muscle memory v symbolic memory
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